you dont need so much capital to release a game, if you only release it digital. If you want to sell it in retail, you need much capital in advance. Normally so much, you need a publisher who can handle this. This means publisher has much influence on the developers and the final game.

No physical goods can be distributed digitally, any more than a signed novel can; any more than birthday cake or a vinyl album can... all you get is a digital sampling of it. Try putting the PDF of the Witcher art book on a coffee table.

What to you is the difference between Steams relative cut and a physical publisher's relative cut... besides that the physical publisher then has to make good on distributing the boxes?

For one, it costs more. Steam/GOG take 30% total...

It's a relative cost. Steam and Gog don't have to do that much to distribute the type of products they can distribute. Publishers would have to demand a bigger cut to meet their part of the deal... or not make the deal.

Anyway, I'm not saying that physical stuff shouldn't be done at all, just that it should be separate, ie the Kickstarter/pre-order copies should be purely digital. If they make an agreement with Deep Silver or whoever to sell a physical copy on release date, sure, but that's all on Deep Silver.

Drool wrote:I'm a big fan of digital distribution, and I wouldn't have any interested in a chinsy jewel case. But something like this? I can't wait for my metal CE box, bound manual, cloth map, and all the good stuff.

Alright, so I'll say what I really mean, I don't think Inxile should quit physical entirely - I think they should do fully digital Kickstarters/pre-orders and any physical stuff should be outsourced completely and separate from the company.

Like I've said before, I think that's the future more than pure digital. It's the mid-price and cheap boxes that'll vanish (save your $5 jewel case in a Walmart bin 5-10 years after release), leaving just digital and high-price special editions.

I'll agree there, but it's not worth Inxile having any direct involvement really. I mean if an external company wants to sell some special collector's boxes, or heck if they want to sell Wasteland miniatures or anything, let them do it completely on their own and InXile just gets a cut from the license.

Tying this stuff up with the game's release date is not a good thing I think, and it might be why WL2 had a bit of a chaotic release with bugs (because of all the last minute running around to get the "gold" version printed on disc).

That's a very good point, too. It's not like digital distribution is free.

Of course, but it's a lot less. Pay-pal donation to InXile for digital copy, the only cut is paypal's fee. Kickstarter/Amazon is 20% I believe, 30% for Steam/GOG, less for Humble Bundle.

There's something to be said for the simplicity of the devs only having to worry about one digital release.

Anyway we'll probably never know but I'd like to know how many WL2 copies in stores actually get sold (I don't think it will be many).

Crosmando wrote:Anyway we'll probably never know but I'd like to know how many WL2 copies in stores actually get sold (I don't think it will be many).

Independent vendors will go to shows to sell their works on the chance that sales will be good. That's enough for them to risk the expense of it. It doesn't always pay off, and other times it does.

In the case of the game developer, you make a boxed version for those customers that either want a physical packaged product, or are not likely to buy it digitally.

*And yes there are vast areas in the US that are stuck with Dial-up Internet as the only affordable option, and that makes Steam unacceptable; no one is going to be downloading a multi-gigabyte game over Dial-up. And if it's Steam, they then have to download weekly patches.

**Personally I call 'for shame' on developers that sell boxed Steam only titles.
(For it is often those unable to use Steam that would look for a boxed version.)

Last edited by Gizmo on October 2nd, 2014, 12:47 am, edited 1 time in total.

Tets wrote:In germany etc. you can buy a physical copy for 30€, on steam the same costs 40€, go figure.. wondering if inxile is happy with this situation.. dont think so..

..deep silver doesnt make any more money with the backers copies. They are already paid, no difference if they would have sent it two weeks ago or if they send it in 2 months.. they care for the copies they can make money with now. so backers items are last priority for them, and thats how they treat them.

Take in account Steam takes 30% cut so 30E is OK if the cut is smaller. Also retail is always cheaper because the retail sellers know that people would not choose to buy from them over directly from Steam if it wasn't.
I have been buying new games through retail for years now and I can always get them much cheaper, especially Blizzard games.

yeah, i wasn't too much commenting on the price actually, but more about the fact, that the sub-publisher here managed to deliver the boxes in time, without any trouble. also if i ordered one through amazon, i'd get it delivered to my house before any of the backers get their copy. is there anything special inside the lowest tier backer box, the justifies the delay (like that keychain that was mentioned)?

Drool wrote:I'm a big fan of digital distribution, and I wouldn't have any interested in a chinsy jewel case. But something like this? I can't wait for my metal CE box, bound manual, cloth map, and all the good stuff.

Alright, so I'll say what I really mean, I don't think Inxile should quit physical entirely - I think they should do fully digital Kickstarters/pre-orders and any physical stuff should be outsourced completely and separate from the company.

Yeah. The truth is though that the trinkets sell higher tiers. Pledge $150 and get a mold of Brian Fargo's dental records from 1982. "Ooh! Sign me up!" So I can kinda see why it's a necessary thing (evil?) for Kickstarter pitches, and the developer can't really start a KS in conjunction with a publisher or geegaw manufacturer.

Complicated, is what this whole situation is. I think I'm going to give up on caring about it now.

Crosmando wrote:What is the point of finally getting away from publishers financially, only to jump back in bed with them to distribute boxed copies?.

The way Kickstarters work is that people pledge money to get a product made. The way the people on the project get people to donate more money than they normally would for just a digital game is to offer physical incentives. Offering those incentives helped inXile raise more money. Just because you think boxed copies don't serve a purpose, doesn't mean they don't actually serve one.

Zombra wrote:Yeah. Physical trinkets are nice, but ultimately packaging is just packaging.

The experience of reading a book is definitely different from the experience of listening to an audiobook or reading text on a glowing screen, but the experience of playing a video game that came in a box is exactly the same as playing the same game from a download. The only difference is that you got to touch a box beforehand.

That said, as long as there are people who get a boner from touching cardboard, game companies might as well keep selling boxes to them. It has nothing to do with games any more, but if they can turn a buck and their customers are happy, everybody wins.

Nope. Again, inXile made the conscious decision to offer physical incentives to raise more money and then made the conscious decision to pass off the manufacture and distribution of these goods to a third party to save money. That company is handling this task terribly, but inXile still made the decision. Again, I'm loving the game, love inXile, but all this "Yeah this is Deep Silver's fault!" "Poor inXile!" stuff is pretty fanboy. inXile made the decisions here. They said "Well, we want to be making money from the game before we take care of the people that helped fund the project in the first place." If you had said to me back during the KS drive "Hey, you can put more money toward this project to get cool collector's swag, but inXile isn't going to be handling it, they won't be able to answer any questions about how physical rewards are being handled and the third party company that will be handling it has a track-record of muck-ups" I probably would've backed to the digital tier. Like others have posted, I learned a lot about Kickstarters from this one and won't ever be pledging the way I did on this one in any future inXile endeavor. Basically, the more you pledged toward this game, the less important you are on the ladder of getting your stuff in inXile and Deep Silver's collective eyes.

All this discussion of digital versus physical distribution is cute for the future but very irrelevant for the present since we were told they would be doing the release both physically and digitally from the beginning. Blaming Deep Silver and putting a halo over inXile's head in this situation is dumb. Over the last three years inXile has been wrong about release dates, gameplay features, the books - tons of stuff. There have been no-less than twelve delays (including beta delays) in the last 3 years. Now all of a sudden everyone's like "Well it's out of inXile's hands. They did the best that they could."

Except that in this case they didn't. They made a bonehead move and passed the buck to the wrong distribution company. This didn't need to happen and saying it happened because DS is terrible is ignoring the real problem.

It's not like digital extras don't sell well. Just look at Torment's kickstarter to see how much money was pledged for purely digital tiers containing the novellas/comic/Numenera TRPG stuff. I think the amount of people who want purely digital extras without having to worry about shipping is growing.

cunningandvalor wrote:There have been no-less than twelve delays (including beta delays) in the last 3 years.

How has it been three years? The project was funded April 17th 2012.

Crosmando wrote:It's not like digital extras don't sell well. Just look at Torment's kickstarter to see how much money was pledged for purely digital tiers containing the novellas/comic/Numenera TRPG stuff. I think the amount of people who want purely digital extras without having to worry about shipping is growing.

Probably so; but to me that seems like preferring photos of a thing to the real thing... A digital scan of a book to the real book [I want the bound manual of course.] One can't get a digital mapkin, and have it be the same thing ~or even appropriate, because the point of it is the physical object as a piece of the game world; and the digital copy of a cloth map (for instance) would not exist in the game world.

Many developers will switch to purely digital works, but some will want to offer tangible product; [even a standard version]. I don't think boxed copies will fade away anytime soon, because there are people that prefer them.

Last edited by Gizmo on October 2nd, 2014, 2:17 am, edited 2 times in total.

cunningandvalor wrote:There have been no-less than twelve delays (including beta delays) in the last 3 years.

How has it been three years? The project was funded April 17th 2012.

You're right, rounding 2 years and 7 months up to 3 years makes no sense at all. Great work detective.

Here's a newsflash for you, Gizmo. The important part of the statement wasn't the length that the project has taken (far longer than their estimate, btw) but the number of delays. The number of dates they said and missed, the lack of information about them, the things they have been wrong about so far etc. is what's important. If anything, pointing out that there have been as many delays in less time makes it worse.

BLARG! yeah I know I can contact Inxile for a drm free disc but that feels so... trashy, to have to tack on an extra disc just to make it so that the collectors edition is able to stand on it's own. If years down the road, if steam flounders and dies (yeah, that'll happen ), the CE (and all others) become essentially worthless. Maybe it's just me but my feeling is that a Collectors Edition should be able to be independent of drm, so that years down the road it's collectable appeal is still intact, regardless of 3rd party circumstance.

SubjectEight wrote:If years down the road, if steam flounders and dies (yeah, that'll happen ), the CE (and all others) become essentially worthless. Maybe it's just me but my feeling is that a Collectors Edition should be able to be independent of drm, so that years down the road it's collectable appeal is still intact, regardless of 3rd party circumstance.

No you're not alone in thinking that... those were my thoughts as well.